Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Perhaps it comes as no surprise, given the nature of birding, that birders do! And a very diligent birder among us just solved a real whopper.
Common Gulls are not so common in Maine—or even on this side of the Atlantic. (Photo: Mattivirtala, courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
In October 2024, birders spotted a Common Gull at the golf course at the Samoset Resort in Rockland. Now, Common Gulls are common in some places, but here in Maine, they are exceptionally rare, hardly found at all on this side of the Atlantic. The species breeds across Europe and Asia.
A bird that rare is going to draw many birding fans, which naturally followed.
Then things got even more interesting. The day after the Common Gull was discovered, a second Common Gull was photographed in Rockland as well. This one was banded, meaning, a researcher had essentially put an ID bracelet on its leg to track its whereabouts throughout its life. That individual was not relocated, but the original bird, lacking any bands on its legs, remained well into November.
According to our birder friend, ornithologist, and sleuth Louis Bevier, a photograph of the banded Common Gull in Rockland appeared to show the numbers 74J on the blue band on its left leg. Incredibly, a banded Common Gull with those numbers on a blue band on its left leg was documented six and a half years earlier in Massachusetts in April 2018.
The very similar-looking—and much more common—Ring-billed Gull. (Photo by Jeff Wells)
Fast forward to January of this year when birders photographed the same bird in South Portland!
Most of the time when a rare bird appears somewhere, we can never know exactly where it came from. This banded Common Gull seemed to be offering the tantalizing answer to that very question. Was it banded in a breeding colony in Iceland? The UK? Or northern Europe?
Wanting to know the answer to that question, several birders who had photographed the bird over the years tried diligently to track down the band number in European databases and with European researchers. They had no success. Despite their determined efforts, all leads were dead ends.
That’s when bird detective Bevier had an idea.
He submitted the band number to the U.S.-Canada banding database but instead of putting “Common Gull” for the identity he just put in “gull.”
He must have been shocked when the reply came back that the bird had been banded as either an adult or subadult in December 2013 in Massachusetts! And here’s why this bird became a mystery: It had been misidentified at the time of its banding as a Ring-billed Gull! Ring-bills are very similar in appearance to Common Gulls—and are way more common on this side of pond.
Although the answer to where the bird was hatched can’t be known, we now know that this particular Common Gull has been spending time in New England for more than a decade. If it is going back to Iceland or Europe to nest, we can only hope that it will be spotted and its leg band noted. If not, then maybe others will see it and document it, wherever its life journey takes it.
—Jeff and Allison Wells
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